Lessons in Life, Death and WordCount

I learned some important things today.

1. If the cat is desperate to get out of the boat and onto the dock, there's a good chance there's a dead critter somewhere on said dock that he wants to get in his jaws. :P
2. I am capable of writing more than ten pages of fiction in one day.

No. These things aren't really related, but fortunately for me, life is slow enough right now, that these were the day's stand out issues.

That I can write lots of words per day really shouldn't come as a surprise. I've done it before. On rare occassion. And I didn't know why or how I'd managed to pour on the wordcount. Add into it that this has been a truly lackluster NaNoWriMo for me and you may begin to see why I'm suprised by 13 pages of new content in one afternoon. Is it any good? Oh, heck no. It's pure brain dump. Rough draft in its roughest form. But I can fix that.

I'd gotten up this morning with the determination that I was going to write and I was going to do my darnedest to write fast. There was a scene knocking around inside my head. Good. I at least had some notion of what I intended to get on virtual paper. But it didn't click for me until a fellow chapter member posted a link to a blog written by Rachel Aaron about how she'd significantly increased her productivity. It's a great post that does a terrific job of identifying and quantifying what made my rare high word count days work. As soon as I read the breakdown, the 'of course' bell went off in my head.

Now, I know what I need to make each day a high word count day. Time, a rough story map, and investment in a scene. Read Ms. Aaron's breakdown in the link above. It's detailed and well presented.

It is a bit more involved than keeping the cat away from the poor disemboweled duck we found on the dock this morning (otters? an eagle? messy and sad.) The cat glared at me in horrified astonishment when I muttered a brief blessing over the duck and nudged its corpse into the water.

I think I'd rather keep trying to increase my word counts than have to prevent the cat from dragging dead things back home.